


Echoes

by BloodyAbattoir



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dubcon Cuddling, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Memory Loss, Mind Control, Other, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovered Memories, Sad Ending, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 09:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18753235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyAbattoir/pseuds/BloodyAbattoir
Summary: It's something else that doesn't quite fit, just like his metal arm. Past and present echo each other in ways he doesn't understand.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frobster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frobster/gifts).



> The dubcon tags are being used here because this is written at a time when Bucky is still the Winter Soldier/'Asset', and as such, I do not judge him as being entirely capable of giving consent. Additionally it's hinted that if the main character does not make the Asset happy, there are worse things that can happen to them, so they go along with things, if only to spare themselves a worse fate. There is nothing explicit here.

The solid metal door creaks open, and you look up. The Asset is back. His hair is a damp mess, and he hasn't been given a shirt. Under the smell of soap is the smell of sweat, the coppery stench of blood. Fresh off a mission, then. 

 

He steps into the sparse room, and the door clangs shut behind him. He eyes you, gaze travelling up and down your body. You repress a shudder. No matter how many times he's done this, it never gets easier. You never stop feeling like a slab of meat on display. Of course, that's all that you really are. Whenever he grows tired of you, you'll be sent off to someone else, until they too grow tired of you, and the cycle keeps going until you're dead.

 

You will never again see the blue skies above you, never again feel the sunlight on your skin. 

 

It seems that you've passed whatever standards he held, because he's crossing the few feet that separate the door from the bed. He's pulling back the thin, musty sheets you've been given, and he's in your bed, a narrow cot, barely wide enough for one person, let alone two people, especially when one is as large as he is. In order for the both of you to come even remotely close to fitting, you'd have to be pressed so tightly against each other that you could feel his heartbeat as if it were your own. In the beginning, it bothered you, made you uncomfortable. You would fight and squirm to get away.

 

You'd rather sleep on the damp concrete that made up the floor of this cell than to share a bed with Hydra's pet assassin. 

 

Now, however? You were still uncomfortable and scared, but you were no longer terrified. If anything, you felt sorry for him, the way that he would look at you as if seeing you, but not truly seeing  _you._ As if he was seeing someone else there. The times that he would cry out in his sleep, sometimes nonsense and an incoherent scream, other times, a name. Steve. Your name was not Steve. You didn't think that anyone else in here was named Steve. The one time you tried to ask him about it, the glare that he gave you quickly killed that train of thought. 

 

You never brought it up again. 

 

There are other things, too. The way that when he sleeps, he no longer carries the sharp features and vicious countenance of a seasoned killer. The tension saps out of his body. He seems younger, more vulnerable. The metal arm lays dormant and useless. As long as he is asleep, he is not the Asset. As long as he sleeps, he is almost the man he was before Hydra corrupted him. 

 

The unconscious mind remembers what has been wiped from the brain. 

 

Like the ritual that happens nearly every night after he returns from only the gods know what, he is pressing into your spine. He has wrapped himself around your body, holding himself so tightly against your back that the two of you are practically one. One body, one heart, one mind, one soul. That damned metal hand, cold and inflexible, is wrapped around your waist. Silver fingers trace at your collarbone, your jawline, your neck. 

 

You know that he could kill you in seconds if he so chose to. 

 

He is whispering something to you in Russian. The accent is all wrong. Whoever he was before, he wasn't from Europe at all. You wondered what his voice could have been if he was actually allowed to use it, if it hadn't grown hoarse from disuse. You could easily imagine him talking to someone he actually loved, curled in bed like this, singing something while he cooked, humming as he worked around the house doing chores on a day off. 

 

Not for the first time, you wondered who he was before the war. 

 

He pulls you closer against him, something you thought physically impossible. Now, you could feel every single one of his heartbeats pound against your back, the outline of his muscles pushed against your flesh. His breath is warm on the back of your neck. He plants a kiss there, his lips warm and dry. A trickle of water from his damp hair makes its way onto you, causing you to shiver. He murmurs something else in your ear, before placing another kiss under it. 

 

You don't understand the words that come out of his mouth, but you understand the possessive tone they hold. 

 

Soon, the Asset is asleep, his shining metal arm still curled tightly around you. He snores a bit in his sleep. His face is buried in your shoulder. Every breath tickles you, and the stubble on his face is no better. You contemplate sleeping, but you know from experience it will be difficult to do so. You're not in the most comfortable of positions, but you cannot squirm. Held this way, you can barely breathe, let alone think about moving. 

 

You've all but given up on sleeping for the night when he starts to speak again. 

 

At first, you think that he's talking to you again, words that you cannot understand in a language that is like rocks in your mouth. But then, you listen closer to what he is saying. He is begging. There, again, he calls out for Steve. His metal arm twitches and spasms. His face contorts, and he looks terrified. His breaths against your skin are now ragged, and a whine is pulled from the back of his throat. 

 

The Asset is afraid. 

 

His thrashing grows worse, until it slams the both of you onto the floor below. The force of the impact is enough to break something in your hand and wake him. Awake, he is even more terrified than he was when he was asleep. His eyes are blow wide open. Terror glazes them. He does not recognize anything. He does not know where he is. He doesn't know who you are. He doesn't understand why his left arm is silver and shining. He keeps asking for Steve. 

 

He has no memories of being the Asset, only the fragmented memories of Bucky Barnes. 

 

You reach out to him, feeling in that moment nothing but pity and sorrow, that such an otherwise 'strong' being could be reduced to this. In that moment, the door flies open with enough force that it strikes the wall. The amount of noise that he has been making has drawn the guards in here. They are furious. The Asset shouldn't be speaking, let alone in English. It shouldn't be asking for Steve, or panicking about where it is. 

 

In that moment, Bucky makes the worst mistake he possibly could. 

 

He stands and charges at the men blocking the door, as if to force his way past them, force his way to freedom. He isn't fast enough. He is put down like the attack dog they used him as. A bright blue bolt of electricity to that strange arm fells him. He is writhing on the floor in pain. In that one moment, it is enough. They overpower him, restraining him and dragging him out the door. You hear one of them mention reprogramming. He was too dangerous to be allowed out between missions anymore. He might remember who he was before Hydra found him, and they couldn't have that. 

 

They couldn't risk having the one thing that they put so much time and money and effort into developing gaining a mind of its own. 

 

If they lost the Asset, they would easily lose almost everything. It would take years, if not decades, to train another to take his place. Of course, a replacement was already underway, if the operatives at the Red Room were telling the truth. It wouldn't come fast enough, however, and they couldn't be sitting ducks in the meanwhile. No, they would have to salvage what they could from this Asset, no matter the cost. 

 

As the door slams shut behind you, you knew that you would never see the Asset again. 


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A 'fix it'. Eww.

Years passed by. You weren't sure how many, but you knew that you were growing older. Not as quickly as some of the others, but you were definitely growing older, slowly, surely, day by day. Just as you'd feared, you were shuffled from one 'owner' to the next. The break in your hand from that night, untreated as it was, never quite healed right. When it was particularly cold out, your hand moved like a rusty piece of metal and felt about the same way. 

 

You had all but forgotten about the Asset. 

 

He'd made you uncomfortable, and more than a little terrified, but he had never hurt you. Well, not on purpose. If anything, he was almost... caring in the way that he touched you. Almost as if he didn't want to hurt you any more than needed. It wasn't much, but compared to what you'd known for most of your life, he was probably one of the kindest people you'd ever met, which said a lot, but at the same time, wasn't saying very much. 

 

Setting the bar as low as considering someone who didn't kick the shit out of you on a regular basis for infractions real or imagined should've been an easy task, but again and again, the agents of Hydra failed to meet it. 

 

You'd grown weary of this life, tired of being treated like a puppet, something to be used for entertainment and tossed aside once they were done with you. You caught yourself wishing to see the Asset - Bucky - one last time. Just once. After that fateful night, you'd never seen him again. You'd heard whispers of cryogenic stasis, whatever that was, in the hallways of the cellblock that you called home. Shortly after, you were 'reassigned'. On long nights where you couldn't sleep, you felt guilt creeping into your bones. What if there was something you could've done to help him? To save him? To save the both of you, him from whatever torment they no doubt had in mind, you from the hell that had been your existence ever since they decided the Asset was too dangerous to leave free between missions. 

 

Your wish would soon be answered. 

 

There was the sound of an explosion coming from the other side of the building. Even here, you could feel the walls and floor tremble from the blast. The ceiling quaked so violently that you were certain that it would collapse in on you, and it rained dust. You coughed, straining your ears for any sounds from outside. There was quite a lot of it. Men were yelling, the injured were screaming, and above it all, the clatter of gunfire. 

 

This base had been attacked. 

 

The sounds died off quickly, until finally, it was nearly quiet outside. You couldn't see anything through the steel door to your cell, with the tiny flaps that only opened from the outside in order to let in food or have someone peer in at you. You didn't have to mourn your lack of visuals on the carnage for long however, as the door was being forced open, the reinforced metal screaming in protest the entire way. 

 

It was the Asset. 

 

After only the gods knew how long, he had came back for you. Behind him, a blonde man in a ridiculous suit, with an even more ridiculous shield in one hand. You looked over the Asset one more time. He no longer held the crazed, tormented look in his eyes that he did when you last knew him. He looked healthy, and.... happy? Why on earth would he be happy to be back  _here_ of all places? As if hearing your question, his lips open, and he speaks.

 

This time, his voice is soft when he says Мой питомец

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote something fluffy and light for @teacup_pup a while back, and wanted to revisit that idea, albeit in a darker form. I'm sorry.


End file.
